Sales Rank:128 List Price: $19.98 Lowest New Price: $9.99 Lowest Used Price: $7.59 Artist(s):
Various Artists
Tracks:
The title doesn't lie, even if it does sounds like a hyperbolic pitch from an old late-night cable TV ad. With 36 tracks of various genres spread over two discs, Now That's What I Call Christmas might be the best, most eclectic "value-plus" holiday record ever released, assuming your tastes embrace crooners such as Cole, Crosby, and Como, plus contemporary boy bands such as Boyz II Men, as well as the ubiquitous Britney Spears.
In between there are the sumptuous classics by Bobby Helms, Brenda Lee, the Beach Boys, Elvis, and Burl Ives on disc one, balanced on disc two by more recent standards, including Bruce Springsteen's live version of "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" and John and Yoko's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)." You're not obligated to like everything here, but that's why Santa invented the forward button on your CD player. --Martin Keller
Sales Rank:347 List Price: $11.98 Lowest New Price: $5.72 Lowest Used Price: $0.01 Artist(s):
Spice Girls
Tracks:
Wannabe - Spice Girls, Rowe, Matt
Say You'll Be There - Spice Girls, B., Jon
2 Become 1 - Spice Girls, Rowe, Matt
Love Thing - Spice Girls, Bayliss
Last Time Lover - Spice Girls, Spice Girls
Mama - Spice Girls, Rowe, Matt
Who Do You Think You Are - Spice Girls, Rowe, Matt
Something Kinda Funny - Spice Girls, Spice Girls
Naked - Spice Girls, Spice Girls
If U Can't Dance - Spice Girls, Castor, Jimmy
Putting aside the Girl Power phenomenon--really, what were the chances five scantily-clad birds flashing their knickers with kung-fu kicks wouldn't make it in the music industry?--the Spice Girls really do mean something: great singles. There's not a dog in their whole back-catalogue. They kicked off their career with "Wannabe", "Say You'll Be There" and "2 Become 1"--that's the pop equivalent of an Olympic gold in the triathlon. They're all here on Spice, along with the live favourite "If You Can't Dance"--one that Geri always looked particularly picked-upon whilst singing--and that irresistible champagne effervescence of pop history in the making. The only mistake they made at this point in their career was not releasing the slinky R&B track "Naked" as a single; and if that's because the video plot automatically suggests itself as too obvious, it's not as if that curtailed any other facet of their career. --Caitlin Moran
Sales Rank:532 List Price: $18.98 Lowest New Price: $6.31 Lowest Used Price: $7.19 Artist(s):
Lindsey Buckingham
Tracks:
Great Day
Time Precious Time
Did You Miss Me
Wait for You
Love Runs Deeper
Bel Air Rain
The Right Place to Fade
Gift of Screws
Underground
Treason
Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham will release his fifth solo album 'Gift of Screws' on September 15th on Reprise. The album is his first since 2006's acoustically focused 'Under The Skin'. Primarily recorded and self-produced at his home studio and on the road during the 'Under The Skin' tour, the album also features two songs co-produced by Rob Cavallo (Green Day, My Chemical Romance). Mixing the immediacy of the best of his contributions to Fleetwood Mac with experimental production flourishes, highlights of the set include 'Bel Air Rain', 'Time Precious Time', 'Underground, 'Love Runs Deeper' and 'Treason'. "You could certainly say this album is a distillation of a number periods of time, some false starts to make albums, certainly some songs that go back a number of years, that took a while to find a home here, combined with brand-new songs and a whole other outlook," explains Buckingham. "And the fact that there was a kind of tenacity and focus to want to bring all of this together in one place. The fact that as an artist I'm still, for better or worse, clinging to my idealism and to my sense that there is still yet much to be said. This is a culmination of that." "The first one was more of a boutique kind of album," he adds by way of comparing 'Under The Skin' with 'Gift of Screws'. "It's almost like the opening act and then the headline act in terms of the kind of approach. Here I'm bringing to bear many more aspects of what I can do - guitar solos, just rocking a lot more in addition to the other things. It does rock more! And they do seem to complement each other." The album also features the unmistakable sound of the Fleetwood Mac rhythm section, as John McVie and Mick Fleetwood contribute to several songs including the title-track and 'Wait For You'.
Sales Rank:198 List Price: $18.98 Lowest New Price: $9.17 Lowest Used Price: $8.05 Artist(s):
Randy Newman
Tracks:
Harps and Angels
Losing You
Laugh and Be Happy
A Few Words
A Piece of the Pie
Easy Street (3:14)
Korean Parents
Only a Girl
Potholes
Feels Like Home
Randy Newman's first studio album of all new material in nearly a decade is, by turns, hilarious, poignant and scathingly satirical. Harps and Angels often has an easy going Crescent City feel, with Newman on piano fronting a small combo and revealing, as Rolling Stone put it after the Carnegie Hall show, his serious love and study of the New Orleans piano tradition.
Sales Rank:155 List Price: $13.98 Lowest New Price: $8.35 Lowest Used Price: $4.39 Artist(s):
Sugarland
Tracks:
All I Want to Do - Sugarland, Bush, Kristian
It Happens
We Run
Joey
Love
Genevieve
Already Gone
Keep You
Take Me as I Am
What I'd Give
Steve Earle
Very Last Country Song
Mercury Nashville's super duo Sugarland will release their third studio album entitled, Love On The Inside, July 29. Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush co-wrote all tracks and have teamed up with Byron Gallimore again to produce.
Sugarland premiered the album's debut single "All I Want To Do" live on the Academy of Country Music awards. The single is available at Amazon MP3.
Sales Rank:365 List Price: $10.98 Lowest New Price: $5.96 Lowest Used Price: $6.00 Artist(s):
Kaiser Chiefs
Tracks:
Spanish Metal
Never Miss A Beat
Like It Too Much
You Want History
Can't Say What I Mean
Good Days Bad Days
Tomato In The Rain
Half The Truth
Always Happens Like That
Addicted To Drugs
Remember You're A Girl
2008 release. Off With Their Heads could/should be described as being the first 'proper' Kaiser Chiefs' album with a solid base on which is constructed a series of tracks which come together as an altogether less frenetic and more cohesive piece of work than previous outings and is almost certainly the better for it. The album was produced by Mark Ronson and Eliot James at RAK and Eastcote Studios in London in the Spring of 2008 and mixed by Andy Wallace (Nirvana, LCD Soundsystem, Run DMC) at Soundtrack Studios, Includes the single 'Never Miss A Beat'.
Sales Rank:144 List Price: $13.98 Lowest New Price: $5.75 Lowest Used Price: $4.49 Artist(s):
Jack Johnson
Tracks:
All At Once
Sleep Through the Static
Hope
Angel
Enemy
If I Had Eyes
Same Girl
What You Thought You Needed
Adrift
Go On
They Do They Don't
While We Wait
Monsoon
Losing Keys
My friends and I have just finished recording a new album called Sleep Through the Static. At this point in my life I weigh about 190 lbs and my ear hairs are getting longer. I also have a couple of kids. My wife popped them out, but I helped. Some of the songs on this album are about making babies. Some of the songs are about raising them. Some of the songs are about the world that these children will grow up in; a world of war and love, and hate, and time and space. Some of the songs are about saying goodbye to people I love and will miss.
We recorded the songs onto analog tape machines powered by the sun in Hawaii and Los Angeles. One day, JP Plunier walked into the studio and told us, "It has been 4 to 6 feet and glassy for long enough," and so we gave him a variety of wind and rain as well as sun and so on. And Robert Carranza helped to put it all in the right places.
After inviting Zach Gill to join Adam Topol, Merlo Podlewski, and myself on our last world tour, we decided to make him an official member of our gang. So our gang now has a piano player, which probably makes us much less intimidating, but Merlo, our bass player, is 6'3" so we are still confident.
All of these songs have been on my mind for a while and it is nice to share them. I am continually grateful to my wife who is typing this letter as I dictate it to her.